


The Bucket List

by Auraion



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Groundhog Day, Insanity, Not A Fix-It, Poor Life Choices, Time Loop, Time Travel, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, bucket lists, except it's a bit longer than that, poor dear needs a friend, stages of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29945625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auraion/pseuds/Auraion
Summary: It all started because he couldn't leave well enough alone.And boy had he regretted it ever since.When given the choice between seeing the end of the world and going back to do it all over again it had been a no brainer. Going back had been the only option he'd accept.It was a shame that it would turn out to be the worst decision of his life.-----He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning."Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"
Kudos: 6





	The Bucket List

-x-

_When the man falls out of the rift, a woman shining in gold in the background, he's holding a book._

_They can't pry it out of his hands._

_So he's bound tightly, still clutching the mildly magical artifact._

_When he wakes in the dungeons The hands of the divine are called and when they demand to know why they shouldn't kill him he looks them dead in the eye._

_"Because I..."_

-x-

It all started because he couldn't leave well enough alone.

And boy had he regretted it ever since.

When given the choice between seeing the end of the world and going back to do it all over again it had been a no brainer. Going back had been the only option he'd accept.

It was a shame that it would turn out to be the worst decision of his life.

That first run through had been painful. Familiar friends and faces had haunted him as he remembered their fates, watched them rise and fall. He'd fought so hard. Harder than he'd ever fought before to save them, to save the world, to save himself...

And in the end he'd changed their fates... and then discovered the hard way it was all for nothing.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

The vacant shock had carried him all the way across the mountain and he'd stabilized the breach for the third time before he'd even had time to think... to comprehend. The rest had been just going through the motions. He'd done it, but the effort had been drowned in a feeling of 'Not quite real.' Especially after... Especially...

Then he'd died in the Avalanche, not running fast enough to get to the mine shaft and-

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

Tears. The fourth run had been heralded by confusion and fear and why. He'd burst into tears under a startled Cassandra's eyes and didn't care in the least. Screw whatever impression of him it gave them. It wouldn't matter in the end, nothing ever mattered. Why, why, why...? He didn't make it far in his misery, he made it up the mountain, stabilized the breach and-

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

The world was grey. Everything was grey. He couldn't feel, he couldn't think, he functioned in grey grey grey and wondered if this was what it felt like when someone in Uthenera woke up in this veiled world like Solas did. He couldn't even bring himself to fight, he ended up just standing there until the fight was over and met his end at the hands of a Bear in the Hinterlands and-

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

"I'm going to die here. Just leave me here in this Dungeon, I don't deserve to live anymore. Just let me rot." He says it in such an even tone that it takes them a few moments to filter their thoughts and in that time he lays back down again and tries to will himself asleep. Maybe if he could learn how to go into Uthenera himself he could just wake up when it was all over... but they didn't let him. He was dragged bodily to the rift and his hand flailed at it by Solas.

He woke in the cabin, the breach stable and instead of going to the war room where Cassandra had been waiting for him he picked the locks on the Dungeons and put himself back in his cell, closing his eyes. Something must have worked, or maybe some one got him while he was unconscious because -

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

He closed his eyes and this time he must have been successful because he dreamed. Dreamed in the fade, but didn't quite remember what he'd seen when -

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

He wanted to go back. A hot rage ran through him, his entire being was on fire below his skin and he hated them. He'd been dreaming. Dreaming peacefully and now he was here. AGAIN!

Resentment and fire burned in his heart and he had to clamp down on the simmering rage while he bides his time and the moment he got the chance he ran. It was hard to feel anything but resentment. He left a pile of corpses in his wake as he moved. He couldn't go home. He couldn't go to Orlais, he had nowhere to run in Ferelden and eventually they caught him. The former inquisitor fought and snarled every step of the way and resolved to just leave.

When faced with capture he'd chosen death.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

The next six resets were spent running.

Mahanon _RAN._

Every time he went he got a little further, every time he escaped he hid a little longer, leading the inquisition on a merry goose chase across Thedas until the rage and hurt finally bled away. Soon enough he was almost enjoying the chase. In those years combined he'd seen so much of the world that he'd never seen before. The ocean from the deck of a ship in the middle of nowhere, the cities of Antiva and Tevinter. He'd stood in the forests of Arlathan, grown wild and dark with no one to watch over them. He stood on the battlefields of Seheron and was even dragged before the Leaders of the Qun on Par Vollen.

But by the end of fifteenth repeat he knew that there was no outrunning the Breach.

Without the Mark on his hand the Breach would expand, reaching out over the horizon until not even the most distant lands of scorching heat or freezing snow would be safe.

All the beautiful views and diverse peoples would be lost to a wave of demons and the sky caving in above their heads.

So it's with that realization that when his sixteenth run through starts he doesn't run.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

Cassandra by now is a constant. The first words he hears in any time line and she will likely never know or understand how complicated his feelings toward her had become. On one hand, hearing her say those words was a sign of failure. It meant he'd died once more. That he had given or taken his life and started over. On the other hand she was always there. Like a script being read out, those words never changed. Even when the rest of the conversation would inevitably be derailed depending on how sorry he was feeling for himself that one line was his wakeup call. And he wasn't immune to unreasonable attachments. He was many years past crazy now.

"What's in it for me?" He asks instead.

They don't expect that. Cassandra is righteously angry and Leliana has a look on he face like she's more amused than put out, but he drags his heels. Pushes them as far as he can to make them give up what they can to secure his cooperation. It opens some strange doors. Favors owed and paid, he learns about the things that not even his advisors realize they could do, the sway they have over the actors in this game, and by now he considers them Actors.

They react to his presence differently on occasion, but they all have parts to play.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

By the time he gets through his seventeenth run through he knows more about the world than he ever knew the first time. He's much more centered and there's a tiny spark of hope as he watches the final steps of the play. He can do it. He's sure he can find a way to break the cycle.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

The less said about the 18th run the better.

It had been a catastrophic failure but he'd tried his hardest to see it as far through as he could only to come to the horrible, terrifying conclusion.

He wasn't getting out of this. There was no hope. This punishment was eternal and he, Mahanon Lavellan, was doomed to repeat everything for the rest of eternity as punishment for his poor life choices.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

That realization had left him in the midst of a psychotic break for the 19th iteration.

He wasn't a zombie this time, but it was a near thing. His psyche scattered and lost to the four winds, he did the bare minimum required to keep the world from going into a demon infested nightmare. Going through the motions is second nature and he's often anticipating the next step long before the world catches up. The other members of the inquisition follow along behind, not sure if he'd a genius or just mad as he sets up the dominoes to watch them fall later with all the deftness of someone who's done it before.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

He's resigned himself to filling in his time around each event, wondering through grey doldrums, more often than not staring into the bottom of a mug and almost wishing he could break his self imposed limit of one drink a day. As the only one aware that he's even in a time loop he's had to impose his own rules. If he's going to be set up to do this for the rest of eternity he'd rather not wind up with a crippling addiction on top of the horrific level of Trauma in his mind.

As it goes, he's seated in the Herald's rest, staring at the bottom of his mug once more, feeling worn and grey when someone slides into the seat beside him. He thinks nothing of it, still mostly transfixed on the dregs of his drink until he realizes that the newcomer hadn't ordered. Hell, they hadn't made a single sound and he turns his head to look.

It's a woman and she looks as ragged as he feels.

There's an instant change in the air as she stares back, a kinship that forms inexplicably as the rest of the world moves around them and it's like they've stepped outside of time. He gives her a wan smile and gets one in return before they continue to sit there huddled in silence. It's not until the bar is emptying around them and the sky has long since grown dark that he realizes that he's never seen her before. Never in any of his iterations has he met this person, seen this face... and while he knows it would be almost impossible to meet or know of every living being in the world, his world here has always been surprisingly small. He hadn't realized it until he'd come back the first time after having traveled as far away as the Anderfells.

The world he'd come to know as the first, the prime storyline, was just a fraction of the known world. He'd thought himself worldly for having left his clan, but now, on the 20th iteration he can only look back and laugh at himself for being so Naive.

Tiny, sheltered, and now that he knows what to do... it's mundane.

Solas had once told him he'd traveled to new places to experience new dreams. To have interesting dreams you had to be interesting.

He knows what those words mean now.

After all there's only so many times you can see the same four walls before you started painting faces on them so you'd have new ones to talk to.

The woman snorts like she can hear his thoughts.

"You're talking to yourself." She tells him.

Oh, right. That was a bad habit.

"You're still talking."

Shit.

She just giggles at him some more as the bartender leaves, then gets out of her seat and rounds the bar to start rifling through the cabinets where Gatsby keeps the good stuff. A number of drinks are mixed together carefully in a cup and she sets one down in front of him.

"So. Interesting shit huh?" it's a question that's not quite a question and he nods mutely, taking the glass and slugging back the drink, only to splutter when it burns on the way down. There's another quiet laugh. "Well. If you've done everything you can think of. Why not just do something else?"

The rest of the night is a blur. Whatever he'd been given it leaves him with little in the way of memories the next morning as he wakes up with the worlds worst hangover. Every blanket in his room has been pulled out onto the balcony where he'd slept under the stars and in the grey light of dawn the only sign left that anyone else had been there is a sheet of parchment stuck to his face by drool with handwriting that's not even a faint match for his own.

At the top of the page is a title that sparks... something, in spite of his alcohol fueled amnesia

**_Mahanon's Time Loop Bucket List._ **

Below it is the aforementioned list. Barely legible with inkblots all over the page and half the options crossed out with notes written beside, but some of it is still readable and his eyes grow wide, more so every time he comes across something that he wouldn't have considered in his wildest dreams. The entire list isn't just a what if though. It's a challenge. Some of the things written there might even kill him, heck, it would take him a dozen reset's just to pull off some of them.

And that's the point isn't it.

To give him something to do.

There's more than a hundred things on the list and it's signed at the very bottom with a drunken doodle of a stick figure blowing a kiss.

He barely remembers that he was talking to someone, let alone who. But the doodle reminds him what it's like to have someone share the misery he's been in, if only for one night.

-x-

_He woke with his face on the stone and his hands bound, back at the beginning.  
"Tell me why we shouldn't just kill you now?"_

The list doesn't make the trip with him to the next Iteration.

He's devastated to lose it. The sheet of parchment has been his grounding point for the entire 20th iteration and he'd memorized every letter, word and line. He painstakingly recreates it from memory and goes about searching for a way to take it with him. It takes several almost complete resets before he and an oddly helpful Dorian find a way. It's not the first time he's confided about his involuntary time travel to someone, but it's the first time he's made the effort to convince someone multiple times in a row. He now has a password that can be used to convince Dorian that what he says is actually serious and not a drunken fever dream. They work on the research, Mahanon committing the results to memory so it can be picked up next time and the Tevinter Altus has earned his friendship in every world he can imagine when he hands him "The Book."

Somehow it's bound to his soul. The book itself isn't anything too special. It's a tome that can only be opened by him and is spelled in such a way that it will appear back in his hands the moment he returns to the past. It's almost a relief when he can finally write down the list for the last time. Mahanon scribbles the doodle into the margins and while the original points are still there, new challenges have been added in the years it's taken to develop the book.

Dorian is equal parts smug and sad when he feels it coming. By the 25th iteration he's probably the one man in the entire inquisition that he knows best, he's also just as certain that he'd never settle for living with him for the rest of his life. He loves his friends dearly. From Cassandra to Cole. He's come to admire all of them in various ways, but he knows that he can't torture himself with being with any of them. The iterations blur together and now there's no difference between a timeline where he was intimate with one member of the inner circle or another. Heck, he'd been in the dog house with Josephine for the last half of the 23rd iteration after he'd accepted her advances only to wake up the next morning and use the name of someone else.

So it was probably safer at least for himself to just love them all as family. It's not like he had to find a partner every time. He already knew them all better than they knew themselves.

He says his goodbyes to Dorian as the world ends, but as he clutches the book tightly to his chest it's the first time he's actually looking forward to what comes next...

-x-

When the man falls out of the rift, a woman shining in gold in the background, he's holding a book.

They can't pry it out of his hands.

So he's bound tightly, still clutching the mildly magical artifact.

When he wakes in the dungeons The hands of the divine are called and when they demand to know why they shouldn't kill him, Mahanon Lavellan, once and future leader of the Inquisition merely grins.

"Because I'm Lost. Can you give me directions to your heart?"

They're taken by surprise. He could swear that he heard an aborted snickering from one of the guard's behind him and standing before him Cassandra's face is a match for red lyruim with the colors she's turning. The noise she makes as he loses the battle to hold back his laughter is one of pure disgust and he's still laughing as she winds back and socks him in the face hard enough to cave his skull.

He doesn't hear the startled shouts of the others, nor does he care that the 26th iteration of his adventure ended so quickly. He knew the first one was going to be the hardest option on the entire list, but heck if he didn't have all the time in the world to figure out how to do it right.

-x-

**_Mahanon's Time loop bucket list..._ **

Number #1: Make Cassandra laugh the first time I see her

X-Died on the first run.

-x-

**Author's Note:**

> So this one is definitely just a plot bunny I got no plans to continue it myself, but if someone wants to add to the concept they're more than welcome to use it as a starting point. 
> 
> Anyway, here's a rough outline of the various iterations and what's going on there. 
> 
> Run one - The game  
> Run two - The best attempt  
> Run three - Shocked  
> Run four - Why has this happened to me (denial)  
> Run five - Going through the motions  
> Run six - I'll die in this dungeon  
> Run seven - mostly spent unconscious  
> Run eight - Fuck this shit I'm out (Anger)  
> Run nine through fifteen - How far can I go?  
> Run sixteen - Bargaining for beer and hookers (Bargaining)  
> Run seventeen - Maybe I should try again  
> Run eighteen - The WORST RUN EVER  
> Run nineteen - This shit is crazy (depression)  
> Run twenty - Divine intervention (the plan is hatched.)  
> Run twenty one through twenty five - Convincing Dorian to do the work for him and The Book is made. (acceptance)  
> Run twenty six - The bucket list Item one. cue the end of the first chapter.
> 
> If there had to be a song for the mood at the end of the chapter it'd be Zero by Imagine Dragons. That song feels very 'I give up lets just have fun instead.' 
> 
> XD


End file.
